Few genres can produce the sort of visceral polarisation among music fans that brostep does. It’s garish, in-your-face basslines and hyper-exaggerated drops have become the butt of countless jokes, memes, and Call of Duty no-scope compilations since it wubbed its way into the public consciousness in the early 2010s, but that hasn’t stopped it remaining hugely popular. In fact, despite dumping on brostep (also known as LA dubstep, or simply, dubstep) becoming a meme in its own right, the genre’s founding father Skrillex won a Grammy last year and brostep-inspired basslines and drops have been worming their way into DJ sets all summer. Love it or hate it, it’s time for a refresher. 

Far from the online infamy it later became associated with, the original dubstep (also known as UK dubstep or, rather chauvinistically, ‘real’ dubstep) began life as a deeply spiritual experience, a love child of dub, reggae and UK garage. According to one history told by DJ Artwork in a Resident Advisor interview, the genre originated in a mistake techno producer Benny Ill made while attempting to produce garage in the early 00s. “Because he was so into his reggae, the snare was on the wrong beat,” Artwork explains. “Definitely that very early, dubby sort of sound was Benny Ill making garage wrong.” Owing to these spacey, off-beat kicks, and deep, low-frequency, dub-inspired bassline, this original dubstep was designed to be listened to on large sound systems, and the songs were initially themed around peace and love.

@sp.mcc How #ukdubstep evolved from #garage #music . #story #fyp ♬ original sound - Solomon PM

Over time, however, music consumption habits shifted into the bedroom and onto tinny laptop speakers which couldn’t do justice to the deep, physical vibrations that dubstep produced. In order to account for this, and for ravers’ ravenous appetite for louder and more exaggerated bass drops, producers began pushing their wubs harder and into higher frequencies. It was in this context that the race to the hardest bass began.

In 2010, UK producer Rusko dropped his sophomore album O.M.G!. The record is regarded as one of the first fully-fledged articulations of the new dubstep sound that would come to be known (pejoratively, perhaps) as brostep. Reflecting on the release of O.M.G! in an interview with BBC 1Xtra later that year, Rusko expressed Oppenheimer-like regrets about his explosive creation. “Brostep is sort of my fault, I took it there and now everybody else has taken it too far,” he told MistaJam. “It’s like someone screaming in your face for an hour – no one wants that.”

Regardless, the sound immediately enjoyed global popularity and notably caught the ears of then-fledgling producer Skrillex, who’d recently switched to DJ-ing after performing with post-hardcore band From First to Last. Skrillex’s 2010 EP Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites marked the birth of brostep outright, completely distinct from its more pensive roots in UK sound system culture. Perhaps in view of Skrillex’s hardcore background, music journalist Simon Reynolds noted how the high-energy, distorted bass riffs of brostep functioned more similarly to metal guitar than subsonic, dub-inspired frequencies. 

This shift proved incredibly divisive. While Skrillex was catapulted to being one of the most electronic producers on earth and even won his first Grammy in 2011, he also became known as “the most hated man in dubstep”, and, around 2014, took an extended hiatus from producing music.

Fast-forward a decade – and countless “wub wub wub” brostep memes later – and Skrillex makes his 2023 comeback with back-to-back albums Quest for Fire and Don’t Get Too Close. The former featured lead single “Rumble” which, while still featuring mid-frequency basslines and a drop-oriented structure, was more understated than his earlier releases, sitting somewhere in-between UK and LA dubstep. The track won Skrillex – alongside featured artists Fred again... and Flowdan – his second Grammy and has become ubiquitous in DJ sets around the world, accruing over 140 million streams on Spotify.

In the run-up to this album release, Skrillex’s Quest for Fire basement DJ set featured “Rumble” mixed with the even more overtly brostep-inspired “Skanka” by Hamdi. Meanwhile, Fred again... could be heard spinning brostep classic “Angel’s Crest” by Viperactive at shows around the world. In the wake of his spectacularly successful comeback, Skrillex proclaimed on X: “I am brostep”. ‘Destroyer of worlds’ may as well have followed. 

Given such a resurgence to the forefront of electronic music, here are five foundational brostep tracks.

COKI – SPONGEBOB

Long before Skrillex picked up an Ableton Push and the term ‘brostep’ was even coined, its seeds were sown in the sound systems and dancefloors of the UK. Termed ‘tearout dubstep’, this early outgrowth started the elevation of the bass out of the subwoofer and into the screechy mid-range that would then be pushed to its extremes by Rusko and Skrillex a couple of years later. Rumour has it that the bassline here is actually Spongebob Squarepants’ laugh pitched down. Did Spongebob inadvertently birth brostep? Who knows, but one thing Coki certainly didn’t know was how big this movement would soon get.

SKRILLEX – SCARY MONSTERS AND NICE SPRITES

If the opening melody to this track doesn’t immediately instil feelings of nostalgia, you probably weren’t online in the early 10s. It was everywhere, from video games to the charts, and even won Skrillex his first Grammy. What Coki sowed the seeds of, Skrillex nurtured into a hulking, headbanging Plantera-monster, and electronic music has never been the same since.

ZED’S DEAD – WHITE SATIN 

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BeautyHow sunburns and tan lines became an aspirational aesthetic

Released just as the concept of a distinct brostep sound was beginning to take hold, “White Satin” inhabits the overlap between tearout and brostep. While not quite as intense as Knife Party or Excision’s later releases, the track enjoyed an early online dissemination that soon became representative of the genre – for example, forming the unlikely soundtrack to this ‘trippy video’ uploaded in 2010.

SKRILLEX FT. DAMIAN MARLEY – MAKE IT BUN DEM

I had an Argentinian housemate in the first year of university who, after one shot of tequila, would aggressively request “make it boon dem” in whatever establishment she found herself in. While I’ve never met anyone who liked this track quite as much as her, “Make It Bun Dem” shows just how prolific brostep was in the early 10s. It was global, it was mainstream, and it was surprisingly closer to its UK and Jamaican roots than critics perhaps give it credit for. Featuring one of the prodigious sons of Bob Marley, the track includes reference to wheel ups and, elsewhere, Skrillex collaborated with UK jungle icons Ragga Twins.

KORN – GET UP! 

Brostep was at the height of its global infamy in 2011, having been scathingly described by The Guardian as “blindingly obvious, lowest common denominator electro, utterly lacking in subtlety, nuance and originality”. The fact that similarly memed American Nu Metal band Korn saw this and decided that they wanted a piece of the action is as courageous. Their tenth studio album, The Path to Totality, featured guest production from brostep producers including Excision, Noisia and Skrillex and, in its headbanging crossover between heavy guitar and screeching bass drops, proved a vindication of Simon Reynolds’ comments earlier that year. The project’s tendency to descend into wub-induced energy releases also marked a wider dissemination of brostep tropes into popular music, infecting artists such as Example, Chase & Status and even Taylor Swift.